LOS ANGELES – He walked in to cheerleaders shaking pompoms, someone dressed in a bear costume and hearty, passionate applause.

UCLA staged a news conference Tuesday and a tent revival happened. Since when has the Bruins’ football coach been this popular?

It helps that Jim Mora hasn’t lost yet. Another plus: He’s not Rick Neuheisel.

Mora stood in front of a room packed with UCLA supporters and dotted with members of the media and — highlighting the made-for-TV production — proclaimed the Bruins’ program to be “a sleeping giant.”

There is no denying the sleeping part.

There also is no denying this: No one — and we mean absolutely no one, including Dan Guerrero, the man who appointed Mora and whose fanny is most exposed here — has proof that this is a good hire or another disaster along the lines of USC 50, UCLA 0.

That’s the thing about new coaches. It’s impossible to guarantee an accurate forecast. This isn’t the weather in Palm Springs.

There was a time when Pete Carroll’s hiring at USC was mocked, and that time was from the moment the move was announced to the kickoff of his first Trojans game. Carroll ended up being pretty good, even if he left behind a greasy legacy.

Another time, everyone acted like it was a surprise birthday party for the most popular kid in school when USC hired Rick Majerus. Last we checked, Majerus still hasn’t coached a game there.

Personally, we thought Neuheisel was a great hire. The former Bruins star rolled in, declared USC’s football monopoly dead and then spent four seasons inadvertently resuscitating the Trojans.

This already is Guerrero’s third football coach and the first with zero to sell in terms of evidence he can succeed on a college campus. Succeed? Mora, a lifelong NFL coach, has no proof he can even work on a college campus.

If nothing else, you have to give Guerrero credit for possessing courage, even as the Internet buzzes about the athletic director lacking pretty much everything else, including a clue.

By many accounts, Mora was Guerrero’s fourth choice, but the decision of three other guys — at least — to not even want the Bruins job doesn’t reflect on Guerrero as much as it does on the appeal of the position.

This can’t be as good a job as so many people seem to think it is. Whether it’s dealing with the knotted bureaucracy of the UC system or the fact you’re sentenced to the shadow of USC, there clearly are more inviting opportunities on American sidelines.

Mora made no brash monopoly claims Tuesday. Good thing, since his hire’s a — to keep with a board-game theme — risk.

He’s an NFL guy and, as such, hasn’t recruited anything more significant in his life than a fourth for golf.

Mora talked Tuesday about being thrilled to have the chance to recruit, discussing it as if it were a new, mystical adventure, like scuba diving. Or marriage.

“It might be the thing I’m most looking forward to right now …” he announced. “I’m excited about going out and recruiting. I can’t wait to get going. I plan on starting today.”

Maybe he’ll excel at attracting young talent. Maybe the exercise will be a source of crippling frustration to him, the fortunes of an entire program tied to the whims of a high school kid and his grades. Today, no one as any idea which way this will go.

Mora also spent exactly one fall as a college coach and even that was as a graduate assistant, which is sort of like being an intern. Or a student teacher. Or a trainee at Jack In The Box.

Mora hasn’t coached at all since 2009, after he was fired by the Seahawks one season into a five-year contract. To repeat, he was hired for five years and lasted one, during which his team went 5-11.

Mora spent the past two years with the NFL Network. So did Matt Millen, speaking of a hire that, at one time, seemed like a good idea. Fans in Detroit still can’t say the words “Matt” and “Millen” without retching.

The easier thing to predict today is Mora’s failure, but only because that’s the more likely outcome. That’s playing the odds.

There simply is a better chance of him not turning UCLA into “a BCS-caliber program” — Guerrero’s words — than there is of him doing it.

This is a team that has been ranked in the top 25 at the end of a season once during the past 13 years. Given the choice between something that has happened once and something that has happened 12 times, we’re going to go with the 12. Every chance we get.

Jeff Miller has been a sports columnist since 1998, having previously written for the Palm Beach Post, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He began at the Register in 1995 as beat writer for the Angels.

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